Asgard Therapeutics AB has raised €30 million (US$32.8 million) in a series A round to advance a novel approach to cancer immunotherapy, in which it is proposed to reprogram cancer cells into functional antigen-presenting dendritic cells in vivo, activating a host immune response against the tumor.

Two sNDAs, one from Bristol Myers Squibb Co. (BMS) and the other from Mirum Pharmaceuticals Inc., have received U.S. FDA approval to further expand their treatment indications.

Medical Korea 2024 opened to a large audience in Seoul, South Korea for a two-day run to highlight advances in the medical field, including those in radiotherapy.

The U.S. FDA has approved Beigene Co. Ltd.’s Tevimbra (tislelizumab-jsgr) as a monotherapy for treating adults with unresectable or metastatic esophageal squamous cell carcinoma following prior chemotherapy that did not include a PD-1 inhibitor. A humanized IgG4 anti-PD-1 monoclonal antibody, tislelizumab is designed to minimize binding to Fc-gamma receptors on macrophages, helping to aid the body’s immune cells to detect and fight tumors.

The U.S. FDA’s Oncology Drugs Advisory Committee, in two separate sessions, took up the matters of Carvykti (ciltacabtagene autoleucel) from Johnson & Johnson and the Bristol Myers Squibb Co. product Abecma (idecabtagene vicleucel) – specifically, whether the benefits of each CAR T therapy outweigh the risks in relapsed or refractory multiple myeloma (MM).

Preclinical data were recently presented for VIO-01 (Valerio Therapeutics SA), a first-in-class pan-DNA damage response (DDR) decoy being developed for the treatment of cancer.